“Sticks and stones may break my bones…”

Thus goes the old nursery rhyme.

Flying off a table-top can break your bones, too, as I discovered this weekend. I was standing on top of the dining-room table to change a lightbulb in the ceiling fixture when suddenly I found myself in a heap on the floor!

So, for now I’m sidelined from a lot of activities with a broken foot and various soft-tissue “ouchies.”

Meanwhile, on a brighter note, my new arrows came. They are handmade wooden arrows made by Dayrl Merrill of Viking Archery Supply, to the specifications of SCA archery events, where carbon and aluminum arrows are not permitted. They are custom orders. You get to choose your own shaft dimensions and staining (I went for no stain and 30″ long shafts), number of fletches, 3 or 4–I chose 3; length–I went with 3 inches; their colors–I chose two whites and a traditional barred cock feather. I also asked for white nocks.

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I think they are rather lovely!

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That is a photograph of me playing the Renaissance lute at the Columbus Arts Festival in the 1980’s in the red Elizabethan dress my Mother made me. Ophelia wanted to play hide and seek with the camera while I was taking these photos. She was too fast for me to get a good picture of her, though:

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I have also been working on a soft fabric case for my bow. Cases like these are called by various names: socks, snugglies, cozies, whatever! Mine is made from a remnant of upholstery fabric that is rubberized on the inside. I have self-lined the case so that the handsome soft side faces in towards the bow, as well as out towards the world. And the case is waterproof.

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I will finish it with a webbing shoulder strap and a line of Velcro across the top to keep the bow in and the rain out. I have enough fabric left over to make a matching separate bag for the bowstring, its wax and my glove.

Before I did my flying stunt, I tried putting up my camping cot in the living room. Here it is, with my sleeping bag spread over it, and a little collapsible modern fabric camping table next to it.

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I’ll be taking it on SCA camping trips, first an over-nighter at the end of April in West Virginia (that is, West “By-God” Virginia) and then a week-long major event called the Pennsic Wars in August in Pennsylvania. I’ll be using this modern camping cot and a modern (very small) dome tent, but most people will be using things that look much more Medieval. Here are pictures of some of the beds and tents of friends of mine:

Janet VanMeter’s wooden slat-bed made by her husband David, in her dome tent (they have a big Medieval tent they use when they are camping together, but it’s too much bother for her to lug along when she camps alone):

Janet VanMeter’s bed at Pennsic
the other side of Janet’s tent

Nancy LaMonica-Barton’s (aka “Kestral”) bed and tent, both of which she made herself!:

Nancy LaMonica Barton’s Pennsic bed that she made herself
Nancy’s tent, which she also made

And the coup-de-resistence, Claude-Wayne Cossin’s bed, complete with tester:

Claude-Wayne Cossin's Pennsic bed

I will feel very declasse among these lovely encampments! But before I get involved in getting a lot of Medieval camping equipment, I need to see if I actually LIKE Medieval camping. Or camping at all, at this age. After all, I haven’t camped in a tent since I was in my 20’s–and that was a while ago, to be sure!